People everywhere seek to find solutions to existing problems in human cultures which have risen and fallen for many reasons. Most dominant among the reasons was how available technology was utilized.
The most significant pillars of progress were transportation and communication and how they were managed. From early times, these two areas of progress were not only significant but absolutely essential. Evidence of advancement, and periods of recession, can be historically tied to these two key forces.
As with any process, transportation and communication can be beneficially used or detrimentally misused. There is now a 200 year history of both in America. It has been very fortunate. to date to have rapid development of new techniques and methods before the previous ones were rendered obsolete.
In the transportation field, rivers-canals, horse and buggy, railroads and motor vehicles were developed. Each has lost its place to some extent as a viable method of transportation for a variety of reasons--some realistic and some through abuse. Aviation, the most recent newcomer to the world of transportation, has also had its problems, but has prevailed so far in a vast variety of applications.
Aircraft traffic becomes more and more a problem of providing safety and economy. Efforts have been made to improve present air traffic controls as to quality. Such improvements have been accepted by many segments of the aviation industry. However, functional simplicity deemed essential to permit maximum advantage from use of highly technical options has left unanswered the need for systems capable of a higher desired level of operation. The ultimate goal of any air control system is the safe and efficient movement of aircraft from one station to another through airspace. As above noted, cooperation between the pilot and manual ground controllers becomes more and more demanding and places severe burdens on the pilot and the controller.
A partial list of those items that effect the air traffic control (ATC) systems directly includes the following tools and controls, which are listed in approximate chronological order of their development:
MAPS showing visual land features; PA1 RADIO NAVIGATION, wherein early methods included: PA1 RADIO COMMUNICATIONS including: PA1 GROUND CONTROLLERS, beginning about 1938 and including: PA1 RADIO NAVIGATION, considered to be a modern method including: PA1 PRECISION APPROACHES including: PA1 1. Pilot with his airborne equipment; PA1 2. Ground controller with this radar scope, etc.; PA1 3. A voice communication network between the two; and PA1 4. All aircraft control programming passing through the Controller's mind for decision.
broadcast stations; PA2 low frequency homers; and PA2 low frequency A-N ranges. PA2 low frequency; PA2 HF; and PA2 VHF. PA2 ground radar from World War II; PA2 ADF stations and equipment; PA2 Radar Ground Controller; PA2 VOR stations and equipment; PA2 DME stations and equipment; PA2 RNAV equipment; PA2 Inertial Navigation; PA2 Satellite Navigation; PA2 Radio Navigation Maps; PA2 Transponder used with ground radar; and PA2 Encoding Altimeter through use of a transponder. PA2 Radar approach Controller; PA2 Low Frequency Loop; PA2 ADF Automatic Direction Finder; PA2 Marker Beacon; PA2 VOR/DME or Visual Omni Range; PA2 ILS/GS or Instrument Landing System; PA2 Radio Altimeter; PA2 MLS or Micro-Wave Landing System; and PA2 Approach Maps and Plates.
Aviation has experienced very rapid growth since World War II and a vast expansion of applications as other transportation methods have become less desirable. Industries have exploded, both nationally and internationally. Today there are approximately 300,000 registered aircraft, of all types, in the U.S.A. alone. The high speed and all-weather use of many aircraft have compounded the problems of airspace use and of terminal facilities.
In 1938, the CAA started controlling airspace to provide aircraft separation, especially during instrument weather conditions. By 1950 the technology and procedures developed during World War II were available. Radio communications and radar are especially important. By the 1960's, the procedures for traffic control were entrenched so that subsequent technical advances were made to fit the existing mold. That is:
This is substantially where aviation is today. It has been asserted that the capacity of the present system is locked into a plateau by its basic design, that it cannot grow to any significant extent in its cumbersome ground-centered form. Further, radar-controlled-vector sequence, with its delays and uncertainties, produces a long, indirect loop from aircraft to radar to controller to computer to controller and back to aircraft. No amount of equipment updating will improve this basic concept of control to a useful level.
It may be said that the entire aviation community is held hostage to a ground-based empire, as it has been for more than the past decade. Future prospects envision more of the same, but with an ever increasing cost to the airplane owner for technical gadgetry to support existing systems, coupled with an aggressive training program to put more controllers in dark rooms to watch their tubes under inhuman pressure.
Current systems utilize omnirange/distance measuring equipment (VOR/DME) navigational aids.
Such systems are now in place throughout the United States and presently cover more areas than any other prior method. Aircraft operating in presently controlled airspace generally follow vector airways which concentrate traffic in certain areas while leaving vast voids of unused airspace. The airway folowed by a given aircraft is primarily dictated by travel between the departing aircraft origination airport and destination airport by way of these vector airways which create over-concentration at the various radio navigation aids.